The extreme north of the continent, a land where the cold winds never ceased. Here lay the Dragon Valley, one of the world's Three Great Unexplored Regions.
Legends said the roar of a dragon could tear the sky asunder, and its breath could freeze all creation.
Yet, a mere hundred miles from this perilous land, there sat a small village, almost forgotten by the world.
The afternoon sun pierced through the sparse clouds, casting a gentle warmth. At the entrance of the village, a large tree with lush foliage offered a dappled shade.
A boy with white hair and blue eyes lay beneath the tree, a stalk of grass in his mouth, eyes narrowed in a picture of utter boredom.
Eight years, the boy grumbled inwardly.
His gaze was fixed on a semi-transparent blue panel before him, where a slowly crawling loading bar showed almost no progress.
I say, System, are you up to this or not? Don't tell me you're some janky, bootleg system.
The boy's name was Aiden.
To him, this world was both familiar and strange.
Eight years ago, he was in another world, struggling to make ends meet. Possessing the constitution of a born corporate drone, he had worked late into the night. On his way home, he encountered a terrifying truck—"Truck-kun"—and despite his best efforts, he couldn't win. Truck-kun: 1, Aiden: 0.
Then, he transmigrated. He arrived in this other world, and for some unknown reason, he had rejuvenated, his body returning to the state of a one or two-year-old toddler. Even his hair and eye colors had changed.
He also possessed the standard benefit for transmigrators: a Golden Finger.
It was a system called "Intertwined Fate." It claimed that once fully charged, it could summon characters, weapons, and even abilities from the fantasies within his memories.
But this System was unreliable.
In eight years, it had only successfully activated once at the very beginning. And even then, due to an unknown error, it had tossed the summoned character into a completely different time and location.
According to the System's scant feedback, that person seemed to have been transported to the distant past and born in "Heaven."
Heaven... Aiden chewed on the word, a bitter smile surfacing on his lips.
He knew exactly what that meant.
This was a world where gods, bored with their eternal existence, descended to the lower world to live among mortals and build "Familias."
This was the stage of the anime he had watched in his past life: Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?
He was certain of this because of the person who had picked him up from the wilderness eight years ago.
He still remembered it clearly. His consciousness had been hazy, and he only felt a pair of slightly cool hands lifting him up.
He struggled to open his eyes and saw a face of cold, breathtaking beauty. Her long silver hair danced in the wind, and her eyes remained closed, as if she were unwilling to look upon the world.
She wore a complex, gothic black dress, her temperament so noble she seemed unlike a mortal.
Her name was Alfia.
Eight years was enough time for Aiden to match his memories with reality one by one.
Whether it was "Orario," the center of the world that adventurers yearned for, or the thousand-meter-high cliff in the distance that cut off the Dragon Valley, everything proved his conjecture.
And Alfia was exactly the monster of talent spoken of by the gods in his memories—the Level 7 adventurer of the Hera Familia, known as "Silence."
Add to that the boisterous uncle named Zald in the village who was always polishing his greatsword, and Aiden had completely given up struggling against the truth.
He had indeed come to this world—crisis-ridden, yet full of opportunity.
The lazy time in the shade soon ended.
Aiden spat out the grass stalk, which had been chewed white, and sat up, dusting the dirt and grass clippings from his trousers.
Sunlight filtered through the gaps in the leaves, casting dancing spots of light on his body, warm and comfortable.
"Time to go back."
He muttered to himself, his voice carrying a familiarity he didn't even notice.
"If I don't cook soon, that woman is going to lose her temper again."
Alfia's temper was harder and colder than the ten-thousand-year-old ice deep in the Dragon Valley.
She never went easy on Aiden just because he was a ten-year-old child.
Those seemingly slender palms carried terrifying power when they swung. Every slap felt like it was going to shatter his bones.
But Aiden had to admit, through her repeated "discipline," he had learned to dodge, to observe, and to find the flaws in his opponent's attacks amidst the severe pain.
Now, the children of the same age in the village—even the beast person kids known for their strength—weren't his match even if they all attacked him together.
But he wasn't a masochist.
If he could eat a meal in peace, who would willingly get beaten up for no reason?
Sometimes, especially in the dead of night when his body was too sore to sleep, a flame of unwillingness would burn in his chest.
He would clench his fists and swear to himself: Just you wait, Alfia. When I grow up, when I become an adventurer, one day I will defeat you and pin you down.
His greatest wish was to stand before her one day as a powerhouse and defeat her fair and square.
He desperately wanted to see a look of shock and astonishment on that face that remained frozen like an iceberg for ten thousand years.
She was his savior, and the one who raised him.
This grace was heavy as a mountain, but his desire to challenge her was like a wildfire, burning ever hotter.
However, reality was a bucket of cold water.
"This damn System again..."
Aiden sighed.
He seemed to be bound by some rule that prevented him from receiving any god's "Falna."
"Falna." It was a specialty of this world, and one of the few channels for mortals to become stronger.
Gods of the lower world used their divine blood (ichor) as a medium to carve sacred text onto a mortal's back, thereby awakening the dormant potential within.
Only those who received Falna could become adventurers, accumulate "experience points" through death matches with monsters, level up continuously, and climb to heights unimaginable to ordinary people.
Having survived eight years of Alfia's hellish "training," Aiden's physical constitution had long surpassed the scope of his peers.
This talent was enough to make any god eager to expand their Familia's eyes light up.
In the past few years, there had indeed been many gods traveling through who took a fancy to him.
They praised him endlessly, thinking he was a born adventurer.
But without exception, when their fingertips swiped across his back, attempting to inscribe the Falna, the divine blood acted like water droplets on a lotus leaf—it simply refused to penetrate.
His body seemed to have an invisible membrane that rejected the most fundamental law of this world.
After repeated failures, those gods could only give up with regret.
Aiden gradually became known in the area as the "freak who can't accept Falna," and no gods came to disturb him anymore.
He guessed this was mostly the doing of his half-dead "Intertwined Fate" System.
Perhaps, only when it reactivated would he have the chance to step onto the path he dreamed of.